12/16/2013

The Year in Retrospective

I can’t believe we are the tail end of 2013. With a couple of weeks to go, I look back, and I can say it has been a very interesting year. It was a year ago when one of my then bosses, Jim, approached me to talk about my role for the upcoming year. We talked about different possibilities, but there was one option that really excited me. He offered me to take the position of Product Owner of the InfraWorks API.

Our group, and pretty much every group in the Company, was transitioning or had been transitioned to use an Agile development approach. With the change, new roles and responsibilities were defined, so now you can hear about Product Owners and Scrum Masters, and there is a myriad of Scrum Teams within each organization. I’ve been following the Agile movement for quite some time, and there were many things that attracted me in it. During the years I worked in the Civil 3D API, we took baby steps into becoming more Agile, and the results were highly satisfactory.

There were two thing that really excited me about the new role. The first one was to have the opportunity to start a new team that will focus in Agile development. Transitioning an existing team can be done, but it takes a lot longer if you want to maintain the team’s productivity. When you start from scratch, you still need some time to adapt depending on the team’s experience, but the transition is smoother; especially, if everyone in the team is on-board with the new process.

The second thing that excited me was the opportunity to work on InfraWorks. I had seen many demos of the product, and it looked so fresh and interesting that I was very happy to be part of it. As I learned more about the product’s roadmap and the future vision for the technology, I became more and more excited to be part of it.

I started the year with great ambitions. I was completely energized with my new role, and I had the plan to keep up with the Civil 3D API even when I wasn’t going to be part of the team. I had many plans for this blog and plenty of ideas for articles that explained the functionality released with the 2014 version.

Then reality set in. I’ve learned that Agile really means fast. Working on an Agile environment leaves very little time for distractions. Your focus is on completing each sprint successfully and when you are starting something new, there is a lot of work to be done. Unfortunately, this meant I had to put aside some of my plans. This blog has suffered because I didn’t have time to talk about what we did in the Civil 3D API, and I couldn’t write about the project I was working on. I also had to set aside my plans to keep up with what was happening in the Civil 3D API world and concentrate my focus on the new project.

Still, it has been a very interesting year for me, and I can say I had a lot of fun working on this new project. I’ve learned quite a few things, and I cannot wait to start sharing those experiences with you. I hope to see you around, and I’m looking forward to the new challenges for the new year.

P.S. It was great to see many of you at AU 2013. This past AU was one of the best for me, and I had the opportunity to attend many interesting sessions and have long conversations with many of you. The trip was really worth it, and I cannot wait to go back next year.